Low Oil Prices: Sign of a Debt Bubble Collapse, Leading to the End of Oil Supply
Oil and other commodity prices have recently been dropping. Is this good news, or bad?
Gail Tverberg
A Fig in Minnesota!!
f you find yourself in a climate like mine, know that it is not completely impossible to enjoy this exotic fruit, you just have to work a lot harder to realize a harvest.
Dark Age America: The End of the Old Order
Capital of every kind has to be maintained, and as a civilization adds to its stock of capital, the costs of maintenance rise steadily, until the burden they place on the civilization’s available resources can’t be supported any longer.
Watching The World Go By: Iceland
When we think of Iceland, thoughts of sustainable fisheries and renewable energy come to mind. Is that really an accurate picture?
Are we on the path of ‘Limits to Growth’?
Researchers are finding that the business-as-usual scenario in the 1972 "Limits to Growth" study is unfolding before our eyes. Will reality follow that scenario further into the beginning of industrial decline this decade?
Technological Superstitions
Mutatis mutandis, that’s what happened to most of the other grand visions of transformative technological progress that were proclaimed so enthusiastically over the last century or so.
To Cook or Not To Cook: The Question of Acrylamide
Acrylamide is produced in food when the amino acid asparagine reacts with sugar, particularly glucose, when heated above 248 degrees Fahrenheit…
The more uncertain we are, the more careful we should be
It is a staple of apologists for the chemical and fossil fuel industries to say, "We have no proof that what you are talking about is dangerous." Let me restate that in probabilistic terms: "We are highly uncertain about the harm of what you are talking about."
Keeping Your Cool in a World on Fire
All over the world, there are waves of distress, anxiety, and depression, which are based on circumstance and not merely on brain chemistry gone awry… What are more useful perspectives to get through the night here at the possible end of days?
To Cook or Not To Cook: The Question of Heterocyclic Amines
In a former life I earned a masters degree in environmental chemistry, toxicology and risk assessment, so anytime the word ‘toxin’ is mentioned my ears perk up, particularly when I hear it in the same sentence as the word ‘food’.
Dark Age America: The Cauldron of Nations
It’s one thing to suggest, as I did in last week’s post here, that North America a few centuries from now might have something like five per cent of its current population. It’s quite another thing to talk about exactly whose descendants will comprise that five per cent.
Ruin is forever: When the precautionary principle is justified
If you are dead, you cannot mount a comeback. If all life on Earth were destroyed by, say, a large comet impact, there would be no revival. Ruin is forever.
